


Winter Moon

by Thistlerose



Category: Voltron: Lion Voltron
Genre: Adopted Children, F/M, Fairy Tales, Post-Canon, Rare Pairings, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 09:47:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/pseuds/Thistlerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While the rest of the Voltron Force left Arus, in search of new adventures, Lance stayed behind to help and guard Queen Allura.  It's been many years now, and Allura has ruled Arus well and selflessly, giving little thought to her own happiness.  One winter night, she gets hit with the proverbial clue-by-four.  Written in 1999.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Keith/Allura grew on me eventually, but I wrote this a _long_ time before that happened! Also, I apologize for the ageism in this story. I wrote it when I was nineteen, and back then, anything over thirty was perceived of as ancient. (I've changed my tune.)

“The Sun Goddess, who protects all of Arus, watches over her world by day—”

She was interrupted by a light but insistent tug at the sleeve of her gown and she looked down into her young niece’s deeply blue eyes. 

“That’s not right, Aunt Allura,” she reprimanded, with all the wisdom and certainty of an eight-year-old. 

Allura frowned slightly and stroked the tangled dark blond hair—like her own in silky luster, but straighter, and burnished as autumn leaves in the warm light from the lamp, an unmistakable stamp of her true parentage. “How is it wrong, Erika, darling? Did Romelle tell you a different version?”

“No,” came the soft, slightly hesitant reply. “I’ve never heard this story before.”

Allura laughed. “Then how do you know it is wrong?”

Erika scrunched her face into a mask of contempt. “Because…everyone knows that the sun is not a goddess! It is a star like all the others, just closer. It’s a big ball of fire, not a woman.”

The bed bounced slightly as the other girl, heretofore listening in rapt silence, fell forward and contested hotly, “Erika, that’s not the _point!_ It’s a story!” 

Erika squirmed against Allura’s ribs and regarded her older cousin with a disdainful look so reminiscent of her mother that Allura had to look away. While her cousin’s daughter and Oriana squabbled over the importance of truth in faerie tales, her gaze drew out over the shadow-steeped nursery to the window. The rose-colored drapes had been left slightly open and moonlight slipped in through the window to pool on the floor. Through the drapes she could make out the flitter of snow falling still. She sighed.

Oriana, who noticed her faraway look, tugged at a fold of her gown. “Mama?”

“Aunt Allura?” Erika echoed.

Allura turned back to the two girls and smiled to hide her sudden sadness. 

“Mama, finish the story. Please?” Oriana added after a fractional pause.

“Have you two finished your debate?” she asked.

“Yes,” Erika replied.

“All right. Oriana, come here. There’s room for you, too…” 

She held out her free arm and waited until her daughter had snuggled down under the coverlet before she plucked up the thread of her story once again.

“The Sun Goddess loved her people dearly and did all she could to see to their happiness. She cast her beams down by day and made the rivers, lakes, and oceans sparkle blue and gold. Her deserts gleamed like polished coins. Her forests and fields grew lush and deep green. And she warmed the ground so the people and animals of her world could walk about in the open and be comfortable.”

She glanced down at Erika to make sure there was no further rebellion at her anthropomorphism. But the bowed golden head only shifted slightly against her bosom and a soft sigh escaped the puckered rosebud lips. Oriana caught her silence and glanced up at her in mild concern. She smiled at the girl.

“Now, the Sun Goddess was a very busy woman, for the world was a vast place and its people were many. She worked all through the day, from sunup to sunset, pacing across the sky, watching over her world. Sometimes the world had too much sun and began to dry and then she could cause it to rain. Then when the world was no longer thirsty she would push the clouds away. 

“The hours were long and she grew weary. Even goddesses need to rest, love,” she explained gently as Oriana’s brown eyes flashed mutinously. The girl subsided. “So she closed the day, lay down on her soft bed of clouds, and drew her black, star-flecked cloak about her shoulders and went to sleep. She dreamed of what she would do the next day, of her people, of her world. And while she slept, her two guardian knights, the moons, rose to guard her through the night.”

She continued to speak, and to stroke the hair of the two girls, but her gaze stole once again to the window. The moonlight had dimmed, but not gone out. “Arus has two moons,” she said, her voice going dreamy. “And they both watched over her while she slept. The first knight—the moon Adena—burned brightest. He was so bright that he blinded the stars in her cloak. But halfway through the night he burned out, and went away. Only then could you see the smaller, dimmer moon, Marpessa, the second knight. He was not so handsome, nor so bold, but he stayed by her side always, and never moved until she began to waken. He was the more faithful, the more true, but because he was not as flashy and bright as his brother, very few saw him. The Sun Goddess did not, for when she began to stir and day began to dawn he would slip away to sleep behind the sky…”

One small head, then the other, lolled against her sides and she broke off. She waited a few moments more, until she was certain that both girls slept soundly. Then she eased them both gently against the pillows, slipped from the bed, and drew the coverlets up to their shoulders. 

She smiled down at their sleeping faces. Erika, her cousin’s youngest daughter, was a faerie child, small and elfin, with luminous white skin, and huge blue eyes set in a heart-shaped, pretty little face, framed by that flaming golden hair. She was a miniature princess to be certain, and, Allura mused, probably much as Romelle had been at that age. Though she could never begrudge Romelle happiness, she could not stave away a keen feeling of envy. To have a little person to love, one who was the product of such love…one into whose eyes you could look and see a part of yourself and the one you loved…

She knelt, her movement hampered only slightly by the stiff velvet of her gown, and kissed Erika’s cheek. Her brows drew together and she put a hand to the girl’s forehead. To her relief, she was not as hot as she had been, and her sleep seemed deep and untroubled. 

She turned to the other sleeping girl and studied her shadowed face. She had not borne Oriana, though she had raised her as her own, for most of the nine years of her life. Allura did not know who her first parents were, and neither did Oriana, for both had died in the final war with the Druls. She could not love Oriana any less for not having borne her. The girl was the most precious thing she had ever known. And she knew there was some truth to what her own old guardian, Corran, had told her once, when she had informed him of her plans to adopt, that Oriana was her daughter as all the Arusians were her children, for she was their queen.

With tears in her eyes, she smoothed her daughter’s soft brown hair back from her pretty face, and kissed her cheek as well. “I love you, dearest,” she murmured, then straightened, and moved to the door.

 

Allura’s long skirts made the gentlest of rustlings as she moved down the blue-shadowed corridors of the Castle of Lions. Outside the bay windows that lined the hallway, snow still fell as steadily as it had been falling all through the day. A flicker of movement out in the bailey caught her eye and drew her to the window. She frowned, but what she had taken for a person was no more than a shadow cast by some servant that moved by a lit window in the floor below hers. For one moment, though, that slip of shadow had seemed to take the form of the wild, careless girl she had once been, dancing heedlessly in the falling snow.

She paused by the window, her eyes trained on the snow-swept bailey, watching for some other sign of that girl. But only her own reflection, gazing at her sadly from behind a curtain of periwinkle lace, was returned to her. 

She studied her reflection in a half-curious, half-amused way. She was still tall and slim and straight as a willow branch, though her body no longer held the suppleness of its youth. The deep cobalt velvet of her gown blended with the shadows of the hall, and she would have been lost to the night entirely, save for the faint moonlight that caused her hair and upturned face to burn with white fire. Her eyes too were deep with shadows.

She’d have heard him even without the crunch of his snow-encrusted boots against the floor. She knew the movement of the air around him, the way it stirred with his breath. She did not turn when he stopped just a few paces behind her. They stood there in perfect silence for a long moment. She smiled at his reflection in the window.

Finally, he cleared his throat. “Allura…”

Her smile deepened and she cast a glance over her shoulder. “Shhh,” she whispered in a low, almost reverent tone. “Come to the window.”

He went to her side, and together they watched the moonlit, blue, silver, and white Arusian landscape. 

“How’s my goddaughter?” he, never one to be too taken by a peaceful scene, asked, finally.

“A little better, I think,” she answered. “Poor baby. I’m so glad Sven and Romelle sent her to me. She could not have gone with them to Amphrose and she’d have been so lonely all by herself on Pollux. And Oriana gets along with her so well… Well, better than she does with Leif or Ria, anyway.”

Lance chuckled. “I like Erika, too. She may be Romelle’s spit and image, but I’d wager Sven was almost exactly like her when he was eight. Except I don’t think Sven _ever_ put anyone in mind of a lost kitten the way that girl does.” He grinned at the image, then lapsed into silence.

Allura spoke softly: “I used to love the winter, as a child. Snow comes so rarely to Arus. When it did, though, I remember thinking that it disguised the world, bundled it up in this white cloak so my enemies wouldn’t recognize it, would pass it over for a little while.” She grinned fondly at the memory. “Nothing could keep me from the first snowfall. Not reprimands from Corran and no amount of spanking from Nanny.” Her cheeks crimsoned. He squeezed her arm. “And do you know,” she said, “part of me still wishes I could be that innocent little girl again. I want to run out there into the night and be wild and free again.”

He chuckled lightly by her ear. “So, why don’t you? I mean, it’s cold as hell, but no one’s looking. Nanny’s half-deaf anyway, and _I_ never tattled on you, even when you _were_ a bratty little girl.” 

“I can’t.” She shook her head firmly. “Oh, Lance. I am _not_ that little girl, anymore. I can never again be so wholly innocent. Don’t you see?”

His dark brows quirked thoughtfully. “No, I don’t. But…oh. You’ve never been to the Brooding Grounds.”

A little crease appeared in her forehead where her brows pulled together. “ ‘Brooding Grounds’?” she echoed doubtfully.

He nodded vigorously. “Guess there was at least one place in this castle dear ol’ daddy didn’t implant in your brain, Allura. Come on.” He held out a hand to her.

She glanced at his eyes, which were suddenly bright with hazel sparks, then down to his outstretched hand. 

“Come on,” he said again.

She grinned. “Well, since I haven’t had anything to laugh at you about in the last, oh, four hours…”

He seized her hand and turned to walk briskly down the corridor. She stumbled after him, clutching her skirts in one balled fist. 

He led her down the sleepy corridors, through a servants’ exit and up a series of flights of stairs.

“Well no wonder I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said breathlessly as they came to yet another landing and she estimated they had gone up about nine stories. “I’ve never been this way, before.”

He said nothing, just propelled her through a door on the landing that led to… She groaned. Another flight of stairs.

Clinging to the handrail and to his hand—for her legs were not as strong as they once were, though the climb seemed to affect him not one bit, she observed dryly—she made her way up this next flight. At the landing stood another door, this one a titanium-alloy storm door, such as were located on the castle battlements. Lance punched a code on the wall panel, then palmed the door open.

Allura was greeted with a sudden frigid blast of night air, moderated only slightly by Lance’s presence between her and its source. 

“It’s freezing!” she gasped, hugging her arms.

“We’ll only stay out for a minute,” he promised. “I just want you to see this. Then we’ll wake Nanny and she can make us some hot chocolate…or give you a sound spanking. I always thought, though, I was the one she really wanted to take over her knee,” he mused. Allura tossed him a sidelong glance, then brushed past him through the doorway.

She emerged on a tiny balcony perched high on the west wing of the Castle of Lions. Snowy wind tossed about in the night all around her, but she was sheltered by the sides of the castle that rose up to a pinnacle about a hundred feet above her head. 

“Go to the ledge,” Lance advised, stepping onto the balcony beside her.

She did, hesitantly, for the ground was dusted with slippery snow, and was greeted with a dazzling sight. Her breath caught in her throat and her hands clutched at the cold stone of the balcony in wonder. Lance chuckled as he joined her, thoughtfully wrapping one arm about her slender shoulders to keep her warm. She hardly noticed.  
“Lance,” she whispered, “this is beautiful!”

“Behold the Brooding Grounds,” he said, sounding pleased. “This is where I always go to…well, brood. Contemplate the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. In the spring there’s a family of hawks that nest here.”

She could see the entire Arusian landscape sprawled out before like a giant watercolor painting that someone had loving laid a white blanket over. From that altitude, without hindrance of buildings or trees, the snowflakes did seem to dance like little faeries, alive and on fire with the moonlight. Instinctively, she peeked out her tongue to catch a few flakes, then drew them slowly back into her mouth, and sighed as they tingled and melted. 

“I hate to say I told you so,” Lance began, over her head.

“No you don’t,” she said and smiled up at him impishly. “But you were right. I do feel very young up here. And free.” She stretched out with her arms, over the ledge. Snowflakes lit on her upturned palms, melted, and the cool, tingling water ran down her wrists. She laughed openly and delightedly. “What a wonderful hideaway you’ve found, Lance! I can’t believe I never knew about it.” Giddy and almost intoxicated with the sweet crispness in the air, she pulled away from the balcony, spread her arms wide, and began to turn in slow, graceful circles, her head tilted upward. 

She was well aware that he was watching her, could see the half-curve of his slightly indulgent smile through the falling snow. She did not care. Somehow, she had never felt self-conscious in his presence, not even when they had both been much younger, before she had ever known a handsome, engaging young man. “I know that smile,” she laughed, tilting her head at him. “What are you thinking?”

“How beautiful you look.” To her surprise, his voice sounded deeper, hoarser. “You look like a flower. With the moonlight on your hair.”

She stopped and touched her hair with a delicate hand, brushed back a fragile lock that had curled around her ear. “The moonlight…does it take out the grey?”

“What grey?” he asked, half-teasing.

“You’re a flatterer, Lance, but you know how to make a girl feel good.”

His eyebrows quirked. “Which one told you?”

She smiled at him again, then moved back to the ledge. She did not want him to see the sudden quiver of her lashes or the tears that trembled in the corners of her eyes. Almost unconsciously, she fingered the soft ringlets that fell about her shoulders. Five years ago they had been bright as newly churned butter, lustrous as polished gold. Now they were silver-streaked, and while she was not at all vain, it saddened her to think that she must face her twilight years alone, as she had faced her youth. 

Again she looked out over the sweeping, sleeping landscape and with the invisible, feather-fine fingertips of her mind, gently pushed aside the curtains of snow and years. In the contours of the night, where the starlight fell on a distant river or lake, she almost seemed to see the glimmer and half-curve of a familiar smile, so many years lost to her. She sighed, and the smile went out in her mind’s eye.

Lance leaned across the ledge toward her. “I know that look.”

“Hmmm?” She glanced at him, startled.

“That distant look of yours. What are _you_ brooding about?”

“Oh…the past, I suppose. Our friends. You’re the only one who stayed, Lance. I wonder where the others are, Pidge and Hunk and…Keith.” There was only the slightest pause before that last name. She went on quickly, “I just wonder if they are safe and warm and happy on this cold, beautiful night. Do you…do you still keep in contact with them?”

“Not really,” he admitted. “I haven’t heard from Hunk or Pidge in years. I think—well, I guess Hunk is still on Triton with Jincy and the kids. And Pidge is probably still at the University.” He looked away.

“And…Keith?”

His face swung back to hers. “You know…”

“I know.”

“That he got married, finally. Who would ‘a thunkit?” His smile wobbled and fell. “I’m sorry, Allura…”

 

“Don’t—don’t apologize, Lance. I am glad that he is happy. Indeed I wish him and his wife…all the happiness in the world. I think I even met her, once, a long time ago.” She bit her lip.

“You loved him, though.”

“I did.” Her gaze fluttered away from his. “But who didn’t know that? I loved him almost from the start. But he could not have loved me, then. I was only sixteen, and a naïve, innocent little girl who didn’t know the first thing about romance, except from bedtime stories. And he was a bold, worldly space explorer. So I fell out of love. And then…” She frowned. “And then…he fell in love with me.”

“He did love you, for a long time,” Lance said softly.

“I know.” Her words were caught by the wind she waited while they tumbled about in the air before their faces before speaking again. “I know. But I did not know then. And I went for years, never knowing. I had so much to do…” Suddenly weary, sad, and a little defiant, “But love doesn’t last if it has nothing to help it. It’s a fire that springs out of nowhere, and if you don’t tend it, it will die. I think there was one day when our loves may have brushed. But then when I was ready to love him again, he no longer loved me.” 

“That’s his misfortune.”

“No,” Allura said, and there was strength in her voice. “No. I am glad he went where he would be happy. He could not have stayed here, not when he was practically born and raised at the Academy. I guess exploration was in his blood…”

“I stayed.”

She smiled, but still she did not turn to him. “Yes, you did. You, the only one… But you are different, Lance.”

“I’m not so different, Allura.” 

She glanced up at him then and was surprised at the expression on his face. His lips were set in a thin, hard line, and his hazel eyes glimmered through the grey and white night.

“Aren’t you?” she asked, and shivered. Her elation at being outside was wearing off and she beginning to feel very cold indeed. She wanted him to put his arm around her again, but something in his face warned her to keep her distance.

He shook his head. “No, we’re not. Not really.” He slid a small smile her way, then glanced away again. “I just found what I was looking for a little before he did.” 

“Arus,” she murmured. “Yes, I can see that. The others all had something else. Keith had his career, Hunk his family, Pidge his ambitions, Sven found Roma. But you…”

“My life began when I came here.” Why did his voice sound so harsh against her ears? “I had nothing before that. Nothing.” The glance he gave her now was suddenly so full of scorn that she fell back against the parapet, gasping and clutching at its sides. “And if you think I stayed here, training pilots, for Arus alone…that’s my misfortune.” He turned abruptly on his heel and stalked toward the door.

Allura reeled. Her fingers, curled tightly around the stone edge of the balcony, were like icicles. The wind was roaring in her ears and she was freezing. He was disappearing through the curtain of snow.

She tore one hand from the parapet and reached out for him, but his back was to her and he didn’t turn to see. She tried to move to him, but her feet were numb and she stumbled and nearly crashed to her knees. He stood framed in the doorway, his back bent, the snowflakes pelting his battered leather jacket.

The wind tore at her hair now and burned her eyes. They misted over, blurred her vision. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. She was so cold! When had it suddenly become so impossibly cold?

They had all left her, her confused mind laughed hysterically. All of them, one after the other. First Pidge, then Hunk, and Keith. Now Lance. And she had watched them go and done nothing because she was the queen and could go no where and so she could never stand in their way. But Lance…

She was too old. It was the wrong time, the wrong way, her heart cried, it was too late. She couldn’t remember the words to say and the feelings had all become cliches long ago. She was losing him, would lose him, and once again she had never known she had had him. Hot tears welled up in her eyes and spilled over their brims, coursing down her cheeks and thawing the muscles of her jaw.

“Lance…”

The wind caught her words, battered them madly with the snowflakes, scattered them skyward. He did not move.

Ruthlessly she yanked her other hand free and took an awkward step forward. She fell, her snow-heavy skirts tangling about her legs. She wouldn’t lose him! She couldn’t! Gathering all her strength and one mighty breath, and bent one knee under her and raised herself up, painfully. “Lance!”

He turned and caught her before she could fall a second time, clasped her against him and held her fiercely. Her arms went about his waist and she buried her face in his jacket.

“Lance, I’m sorry,” she gasped, weeping openly now, and shaking in his embrace. “I’m so sorry. Don’t leave me. Please don’t. I couldn’t bare losing you, too.”

He laughed shakily above her head. “Am I the best of what’s left?”

She hugged him convulsively and shook her head. “No. You are the best. The most faithful. And I love you. Oh, Lance.”

He cup her chin in his hand, tilted her face up to his own. His eyes were still hard as glass and completely unreadable. “Say that again.”

“I love you! I do. I don’t know how or in what way, but I do love you. And if you leave me…”

He wiped the tears from her cheeks with the pads of his thumbs. “I’m not leaving you, Allura. How can I, when you’re the reason I’ve stayed here all these years?” He brought her back against him, tightly. “You’re the best thing I’ve ever known. And you’re wrong about love going out if it has nothing to help it. It doesn’t—shouldn’t—if it’s the right love.”

She hung in his embrace, breathing deeply. “All these years,” she murmured into his chest. “You were always right there, right in front of me, and I never saw, never knew. But Lance,” she said, breaking away from him in sudden despair. “We’re…we can’t… I mean… Lance, it has been thirty years! I shall be forty-seven in the fall!”

“What has _that_ got to do with anything? Allura, we could both live to be a hundred. Figure we’ve got about fifty-three more years left. I realize geologically speaking, that’s nothing, but… Ah, you’re laughing again. Good.” He smiled down at her and the hard cast to his eyes vanished.

“Fifty-three years…” she murmured, studying his dear face. He was almost fifty now. The face she had first seen and adored thirty years ago had hardened over the years, darkened, and become more lined and weathered. She reached up with a trembling hand and touched his cheek. She smiled tenderly. “What can we do for fifty-three years?”

“Oh, I know a few tricks,” he promised her and the curve of his smile deepened, as did hers. “I’ll try one on you now, if you like.”

“What…”

“Close your eyes.”

“Hmm?”

“Those baby blues of yours. Close ‘em.”

She did as she was bidden, and turned her face up to his, another smile tugging at her lips and blush of anticipation blossoming in her belly. He cupped her shoulders with his fine, strong hands, then lowered his face to hers, and brushed her lips softly with his own.

“Open your eyes,” he murmured against her lips.

She did. “You’re still here!”

“Of course I’m still here,” he whispered, bringing her close against him again. “I will always be here. Always, as long as you need me.”

“I think,” she said softly, slipping her arms up his back to twine about his neck, “that I shall always need you.” She flushed. “And I shall always want you.”

His quicksilver smile flashed. “Good.” 

Their kiss deepened, sweetened, and they were soon enveloped in a cocoon of need and tenderness so warm that the snowflakes still dancing madly around them really did turn to faerie fire and burned away before they ever touched the ground.

When they finally broke apart, they smiled shyly across the night at each other, like new young lovers. His fingers slid through hers and together they walked back, swiftly, dazedly, into the soft glow of the doorway.

The moon watched them go.

 

10/24/1999


End file.
